


Mr Rogers' Neighbor Feud

by vulcan_slash_robot



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amputee Tony, Happy Ending, M/M, Miscommunication, Neighbors, Petty Feuds, Prank Wars, Unreliable Narrator, dummy is a dog, fake iron husbands, fake married BUT not to each other, implied animal abuse BUT that's because of, implied homophobia in the surrounding society but we dont have to look right at it, mostly fluff and silliness with a little angst for flavor, non-graphic descriptions of a major injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vulcan_slash_robot/pseuds/vulcan_slash_robot
Summary: “You’re going to die alone,” Steve says, coldly. “You live every day like you’re waiting for a wife to come along and pick up your messes but you are never, ever going to find one.”“Good! Great!” Stark throws his arms out wide. “I don't NEED a wife, because my HUSBAND loves me JUST THE WAY I AM!”There’s a moment of perfect, ringing silence.Steve’s mouth is hanging open. He should say something.“Congratulations,” he chokes out.Steve hates his neighbor, and his neighbor hates him, right up until they find out they didn't actually know each other at all.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 38
Kudos: 134





	Mr Rogers' Neighbor Feud

**Author's Note:**

> Blessed be the PoTS server and all its helpful people and their willingness to solve plot problems or at least nod encouragingly while I ramble until I figure out what I wanted the story to be about in the first place. Particular shoutout to [JehBeeEh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JehBeeEh/pseuds/JehBeeEh) for cheer reading. <3
> 
> Happy Birthday, Steeb.

Steve has had enough.

He pulls on his work gloves. 

He settles the earmuffs over his ears, carefully adjusting them until they don’t crush awkwardly into the arms of his sunglasses. 

He pulls the ripcord three times, and the lawnmower starts with a roar.

It’s a beautiful day. The sun is bright but it’s still early so it’s not too hot, yet. The sky is clear, the air is fresh. The smell of cut grass quickly blends into, and soon almost overwhelms, the exhaust fumes. The grass is neat and short as it passes under Steve’s already-stained sneakers. He ducks to avoid the sagging branches of the cherry tree. He should trim that, before it starts to block the sidewalk. 

He reaches the invisible line that marks the edge of his property, and the beginning of his neighbor’s yard.

He keeps walking.

Immediately, the mower engine begins to chug. The week’s tidy growth of Steve’s front lawn has given way to nearly knee-high brambles of grass that has stood uncut for almost two months, thick with dandelions. It’s almost inevitable that he’s going to run over a tennis ball. Or a socket wrench. 

He deliberately hip-checks the sign saying “Free Dandelions! Please take one :)” and mutters a quiet “oops” to himself as it tips over into the street. His asshole neighbor had put that up when Steve had asked him to do something about the weed problem in this lawn, because it was spreading to everyone else’s yards on the block, too.

It’s a legitimate concern.

Steve makes two full passes across the width of both lawns before his path is blocked.

A man in pajamas, one sock, and a thin, tattered-flannel housecoat is suddenly standing in the tall grass right in front of him, disbelief on his face and arms spread wide like a human barricade. He’s yelling something.

Steve stops.

He keeps the mower running, and makes no move to take off his earmuffs. The man is still yelling. Steve lets him. He can’t hear it.

Finally the man moves, and Steve starts to take another step forward, but his neighbor is quick. He strides right up to Steve--from the side, the man’s not idiot enough to risk his toes, not that Steve would ever run over them on purpose--and rips the headphones off of his head. Now exposed to the noise of the mower, Steve silently acknowledges that this part of his gambit is over, and lets the motor die.

“--the FUCK off of my PROPERTY!!” the man finishes shouting. A little spit flies out of his mouth, punctuating his words by spattering across Steve’s face. 

“Oh, is this your property?” Steve answers, casually. He wipes his face. “You know, I’ve never seen anyone take care of it, I was starting to think maybe that was my job, and I’d been shirking it.” He starts using what his friends call his  _ gee whiz _ voice. “I’d just hate to be the one responsible for letting this nice lawn go to pot, that’d be a real shame.”

“Why you arrogant son of a--fuck you!” the man snarls. “My house is  _ my  _ business and if you don’t literally get off of my actual fucking lawn I  _ swear to god--” _

“Home ownership is a responsibility, Stark,” Steve barks back. The anger that’s been boiling over in him all morning finally starts to get into his words. “If you weren’t ready for that then maybe you should have stayed home with Mama for a few more years.”

“You want to bring  _ mothers  _ into this?” Stark plants both hands on his hips and gets a little further up into Steve’s space. “Because I’d  _ love  _ to have a few choice words with yours about the little prig she raised, right now! Give me your phone, wise guy, we’ll see what she thinks about this shit.”

Steve grits his teeth at that, and Stark’s eyes light up with triumph. 

“Wassamatter?” Stark taunts. “Don’t think she’d be proud of her little bully?”

“You’re going to die alone,” Steve says back, coldly. “You are the most obnoxious piece of shit I have ever met. You live every day like you’re waiting for a wife to come along and pick up your messes but you are never, ever going to find one.”

“Good! Great!” Stark throws his arms out wide. “Fuck that! I don't  _ need  _ a wife, because my HUSBAND loves me JUST THE WAY I AM!”

There’s a moment of perfect, ringing silence.

Steve’s mind is a clean white blank.

What.

Stark is staring wide-eyed at him. He’s in a panic. The words  _ I should not have said that _ are practically printed on his forehead. 

Steve’s mouth is hanging open. He should say something.

“Congratulations,” he chokes out.

Steve turns on his heel and speedwalks back to his own front door, which he slams and locks behind him.

***

Fuck. _ Fuck.  _

Okay, wow. Fuck.

Steve really fucked that one right up.

He can acknowledge that the mowing thing was pretty petty to begin with. It’s always like this, between him and Stark. One thing just leads to another so fast. One second they’re strangers who happen to live next door to each other and the next they’re mortal enemies and Steve has no idea how it happened.

Well.

Partly it happened because Steve is a little bit of an idiot. He was trying to  _ help. _ He’d noticed the messy lawn next door when he moved in this past April and he’d gone over to introduce himself, expecting to find a sweet little old lady in a wheelchair who might appreciate it if the strapping young lad from next door volunteered to keep her flower beds tidy and her grass short. Only the door had been answered by a short, muscular, unshaven man in a Sooners shirt with the sleeves ripped off, carrying a bottle of beer at ten in the morning and flanked by a three-legged sheep dog. Steve had been so thrown that all his attempts to explain why he’d come over had come out sounding like accusations and it would be putting it very mildly to say that his help had not been welcomed. 

He’s had a certain image of Tony Stark in his head, ever since that first meeting. Sloppy. Unkempt. Suspicious of strangers. Defensive of what’s his, but unwilling to put work into it. Quick to anger. Exactly what Steve had been afraid to find himself surrounded by when he’d moved to Oklahoma, and Steve had unconsciously filled in the blanks with the rest of his fears. 

Racist. Misogynist. Anti-science.

Homophobe.

Now there’s a big hole in Steve’s mental picture, and he’s wondering, in absolute terror, how much of that picture he’d extrapolated from very little evidence. 

But Stark is still a shitty pet owner, right? Steve knows that one for sure. 

He reaches out automatically as he passes the cat tree at the corner between the living room and the hallway that leads back to the master suite. Cadbury dutifully mooshes his face into Steve’s palm for a brief pet. Yeah. Caddy-Cat is way happier here, Steve had been right to rescue him. Doesn’t matter how many times Stark deliberately instructs his dog to crap on Steve’s front walk, Cadbury is not going back there. 

Still. Steve has fucked up.

***

The doorbell rings. Steve can hear it, faintly, from where he stands on the front step. Nothing happens, for quite a long time. Steve is just reaching for the bell again when the door finally opens, just a sliver. There’s a single, suspicious eye peeking through the crack, still shielded by the screen door.

Stark says nothing. The silence is incredibly awkward.

“I brought muffins,” Steve blurts out, when he can’t take it anymore.

“Are they poisoned?” 

“No.”

“Is there dog shit in them?”

“I think that would count as poison,” Steve points out. “You can pick one at random and watch me eat it, if that would make you feel better.”

“Not my kink,” Stark replies, without missing a beat. “Why are you here.”

“I brought muffins?”

“So you’ve said.” The door has not opened any wider. The sheepdog whines softly from somewhere out of sight and Stark’s glance darts down to the side for a moment. “Shut up, dummy, the grownups are talking.”

A flash of irritation threatens to leap out of Steve’s mouth as more harsh words, but he’s done enough of that for this morning. He bites it back and chews on it until he can spit it out as a terse “I’m sorry.”

“Beg pardon?” The one eye that Steve can see is fixed on his face again, and wide with incredulity.

“I said, I’m sorry.” Steve forces himself to repeat.

“Holy shit, I didn’t think you knew those words. Stay right there, I’m going to get my phone and record that for my ringtone.” It’s an empty threat. He still hasn’t moved. “Sorry for what.”

Steve draws in a deep breath. “I took it too far. I just, you make me  _ so angry--” _

“Feeling’s mutual.”

“Yeah, I got that. But I thought I knew who you were and apparently I had at least one thing completely backwards so I think maybe it’s time to take a step back and start over. Hi. I’m Steve. I live next door. I brought muffins.”

“You--hold the fuck up,” Stark finally moves, pulling the door open just wide enough to poke his whole head out, still protected by the screen door. His face is deeply creased with confusion. The sheepdog’s nose peeks curiously out between his knees. “You find out I’m gay and your reaction is that you want to be friends?”

_ “Friends _ might be a little ambitious, but I’m willing to negotiate a cease-fire. Were you expecting something else?”

“I got a cell phone in my hand with 9-1-1 pre-dialed and my thumb over the call button, buddy.” His hand tips into the gap of the door above his head. He’s not kidding. 

Steve’s heart plummets. Oh, god, did he think Steve would actually try to  _ kill  _ him? 

“Wow,” Steve husks out. His eyes are burning. “Okay. Shit. Well. These are for you. Have a nice day.” He sets the basket of muffins on the front step, and starts to walk away. 

“Fuck, wait--” 

Steve pauses in the driveway. He can hear Stark behind him, quietly admonishing the dog to  _ stay  _ before slipper-clad footsteps hurry down the drive behind him. There’s a gentle touch on his shoulder, so he turns around. 

“Shit, that really upset you.”

“It’s fine,” Steve chokes out. He’s not crying, and he’s not going to. Definitely.

“I kind of think it isn’t.”

“Why would you come out to me if you thought it would put you in danger?” Steve bursts out. His voice cracks. 

“I didn’t really mean to. I just wanted to say something that would piss you off. Didn’t think about how  _ much  _ it might piss you off until after.” Stark looks away, curling in on himself a little. “Generally a bad idea for a man to mention having a husband to a guy who bakes  _ birthday cakes  _ for  _ America, _ at least in Oklahoma.”

Steve blinks about a hundred times in two seconds. “You...what?”

“I didn’t, I don’t--okay, I can kind of see into your backyard from my guest room upstairs, right? And I don’t usually look on purpose but someone close by was setting off mortars and I wanted to see if it was you, full disclosure, so that I could call the cops on you if it was, and it wasn’t, but there you were with like ten other huge buff all-American types, gathered around a birthday cake and singing with your hands on your hearts on the Fourth of fucking July, so. Little worrisome, for me.”

Steve gapes at him for a moment. There are no words. He takes out his wallet, flips it open, and pulls out his driver’s license. He offers it to Stark.

“What’s this for?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Steve can see the exact second that Stark reads the line labeled  _ Date of Birth. _

“Oh, fuck me running,” Stark whispers. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“People don’t sing Happy Birthday with their hands over their hearts!” Stark insists. “And there was a flag on the cake!”

“My friends think they’re hilarious,” is Steve’s only defense, but it seems to be enough. Stark hands back the license and buries his face in his hands.

“You know what, maybe you should come in and have a muffin.”

***

The inside of Stark’s house is almost a bigger shock than the word “husband” had been.

The place is  _ spotless. _

There are signs of life, here and there: a magazine left open on the sofa, a couple of dog toys on the carpet, a butter knife inexplicably abandoned on top of a cabinet full of DVDs. But the living room and then kitchen that he leads Steve into are both thoughtfully, tastefully decorated and free of the tumbleweeds of fur that Steve is still trying to figure out how to keep up with now that he has an indoor pet himself. 

“I cannot  _ believe  _ how hard I judged you for that cake,” Stark mutters to himself, taking down a mug from the cupboard. “I mean, I can, I was there, I did it, but still. Coffee?”

“Sure.”

Steve takes a seat at the kitchen table and unwraps a muffin. Stark sits across from him, placing two steaming mugs on the table. Contrary to his earlier denial, he waits, watching, until Steve has taken a bite of muffin before grabbing one for himself. Steve lets this pass without comment. 

“So…”

“So.” 

Steve stares at Stark. Stark stares at Steve. The dog, also, stares at Steve. Steve switches to staring at the dog. It’s less awkward. Stark scoffs.

“He wants your muffin,” he explains. He whistles through his teeth, a short, precise, rising tone. The dog hops to its feet immediately and trots to the rug in front of the back door, where it lays down. “Good boy. No begging.”

The dog huffs and settles a little lower down against the floor. Steve wants to be charmed, but he can’t forget that the little beast has a wicked prey drive. “What’s his name?” he asks, neutrally, just to have something to talk about.

“Dummy.”

Steve frowns, and Stark notices. 

“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t pick it. It’s his call name. His registered name is ‘My Kingdom for a Sheep’ plus a bunch of garbage letters that mean things.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Even breeders aren’t going to say all that every time they want to mention a dog, though, that’s what call names are for. Not my fault he won’t answer to anything else.”

“He’s a purebred?” Why. Why does this man have a purebred.

“Australian Shepherd, right down to the bone,” Stark answers. He sounds fond, but not in the proud way Steve would expect from someone who chooses a dog for its pedigree. “He used to show, before he lost the leg. One of the other dogs nipped him--probably at home, not at a show--but nobody knew about it until it was too infected to do anything less than take the whole thing off. He wasn’t getting as much attention as he needed after that, in a home full of other dogs that were still actively showing, and I happened to be looking for a dog, and a friend of mine knew a friend of the owner, and once I saw him, I mean, it’s cheesy, but we make a pair, don’t we?”

Stark has his chin in one hand and his coffee in the other and he’s giving Steve a wry, sideways smile like he expects Steve to know exactly what that means. 

“I have no idea what you mean,” Steve says, truthfully.

Stark’s brow furrows. He takes a slow sip of coffee, studying Steve.

“You’re serious,” he observes, setting down the mug. “You’ve really never noticed any obvious reason I might feel a special empathy to a three-legged dog?”

“No?”

Stark bursts out laughing. 

“Oh,  _ no,” _ he gasps. “This keeps getting worse. You’re just a big awkward goober, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Steve can feel the back of his neck heating up.

“No, no, that’s about ten steps up from my previous assessment of your character, and it absolves you of a lot of sins. Holy shit. I thought you  _ knew, _ the stuff you  _ said  _ that day, you  _ asshole…”  _

He trails off and bends at the waist to pull a third chair out from the table, the one to his left and Steve’s right. With a somewhat dramatic flourish, he sweeps his left leg up off of the ground and drops his calf onto the wooden seat. It lands with an incongruous  _ clunk. _

“Or goober, as the case may be,” Stark corrects himself, grinning. He pulls up the leg of his sweatpants to the knee, revealing a tall, black sock that continues out of sight up his thigh. Steve mentally connects it to the single sock he’d had on when he’d come out to confront the mower earlier. Stark begins tugging at the material, working it down, and it pulls away to show bright, polished metal.

“What the fuck,” the words tumble out of Steve’s mouth without permission, and his blush shifts into one of embarrassment rather than anger. “No, _ no, _ I’ve been after you for not doing more yardwork and you had _ one leg _ the entire time?!”

“No, bad goober, wrong lesson,” Stark says sternly, pointing a finger at him. “No making assumptions about what I can do. I have great mobility, this baby is state of the art, and the vast majority of your conduct was out of line regardless. You did that shit to be a dick on purpose. It does suck a little less now that I know you weren’t intentionally being ableist, though.”

Steve groans and drops his forehead to the table.

“To be fair, I was also a dick on purpose a lot.” Stark sounds like he’s grinning again. He takes a loud, slurping drag of his coffee. “Do you want to know what happened to my leg?”

“Only if you feel like telling me.”

“It was the stupidest shit that’s ever happened to me,” Stark informs him, gleefully. “Rhodey wanted to go on a big wilderness hike to celebrate when we finished undergrad. He’d been goading me into it for months, teasing me about being a pampered city boy, and I fell for it like an idiot. I was so eager to prove I was a big man, I could survive just fine in the woods for a week. And then, I swear to god, this actually happened, I put my foot in a literal bear trap.”

Steve’s head snaps up. Stark grimaces, rueful. 

“Rather not get into the details, there, but those things are made to take down something a lot bigger than a nineteen-year-old electrical engineering major, so you can imagine about how it went. They took what was left off at the knee. I had a satellite phone on me, thank god, or I might not be here today.” His voice has gone quiet. “I don’t think Rhodey’s ever quite forgiven himself.”

“Is that your husband?” Steve asks, equally quiet.

Stark is instantly frozen with panic.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, you don’t have to--”

“No, it’s fine,” Stark coughs, and gives himself a little shake. “Just. Still getting used to it. That you’re not actually that kind of asshole. Uh. Yeah, no. Rhodey’s my guy, yeah. His name is Jim, actually, James Rhodes, but I’m an inveterate nicknamer and I think if I called him by his actual given name at this point he might faint.”

“You didn’t take his name? Or vice-versa?”

Stark shakes his head. “World wasn’t ready for it, at the time. We made it legal when that became a thing, but by then it would have been so much hassle that we decided to skip the name change.”

“You’ve been together a long time, then,” Steve observes, warmly. That sounds nice. 

There follows a steady back-and-forth, Steve asking all the standard questions he can think of that don’t sound too invasive--how long has it been, how did you meet, what’s he like--and Stark answering the best he can. Turns out that, yes, Stark  _ did  _ say that he’d been nineteen while on a trip that took place  _ after  _ undergrad, he’d gone off to university at sixteen and finished his Bachelor’s of Science in three years. Rhodey had been his freshman roommate, and they’ve been inseparable for nearly twenty years. 

“Except for the part where he’s in the air force, and the air force can suck my goddamn dick,” Stark drains the last of his cooling coffee. “I haven’t seen him in almost ten months.”

There’s so much emotion in Stark, when he’s talking about his husband. He gets awkward and tense when he has to address the nature of their relationship, out loud, in front of Steve, but when he’s just reminiscing about time they’ve spent together…

It’s weird to see him this expressive. Weird to witness such a deep, personal happiness in his eyes. When Steve sees this man smile it’s usually because of some terribly inconvenient victory he’s scored over Steve in their ongoing war, and it’s a cruel, nasty sort of happiness, then. This is something entirely different. It looks strange on him.

It makes him look like a human being. 

Steve takes a gulp of his own coffee in an attempt to wash back the tide of guilt that’s rising up his throat. The coffee is cold. He checks the clock on the microwave, and finds, mercifully, an excuse to leave. 

“Oh, wow, it’s getting late,” he says, a bit too hastily. “Sorry. This has been great, but uh, I had things to do today…”

“Sure, yeah, go on,” Stark waves him off, and stands up to see him to the door. “More than you bargained for, I get it.”

“No, I…” Steve isn’t good at saying what he means, especially around this man. He searches for the words for a moment, then gives up with a huff and shakes his head. “I’ll see you around, Stark.”

“You stop that. My name is Tony.  _ Stark  _ was some fictional asshole you made up to fight with.”

“Okay, Tony,” Steve laughs. 

“See you around, Goober.”

“No.” Steve points a finger back in Tony’s grinning face as he steps out the door. “Steve.”

“We’ll see.”


End file.
